The Saturday Morning Post (No. 41)

 

I've set myself up for an impossible task - describing, reviewing and recommending a book that I've read maybe six times over the last thirteen years, making it perhaps my favorite book of all time. The book is not Anne of Green Gables. Or anything like it. Instead, it is a strange, silly, satirical, mystery/post apocalypse novel. It's a slice of live story that only covers just four days. But a lot happens in four days. I recommend it to everyone, knowing that it's not a book for everyone. I will say, however, that I think most people who have read it on my recommendation have liked it, though not to the extent I do. So, without further ado, tallyho! 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde   A+

I think I'd best start with the writing before I get to the basic premise of the story. This book offers exactly what I value most in a book; a small story (though with big implications), a first person narrative with a focus on characters, which is written with a great deal of clever wit and humor. I'm not a lad for silly stories, as a general rule. Silly, slapstick humor doesn't have a great appeal to me. But having said that, this story has a great deal of silliness in it that is handled in a matter of fact way. It's part of the humor. What redeems it for me is that all the silliness is grounded in the premise of the society the story is set in. It is not silliness just for the humor of silliness. It only seems silly to us because we are peering into this world from our own. Everything is very real to the characters in the story. Wodehouse was a master of this; while you couldn't take his characters, and the situations they get themselves into, seriously in our "real world", they are, however, entirely believable within the make-believe world he creates; a world that is just next door to our world.  

Part of the charm of this book is that it is a mystery on several different levels. We are dropped into this world without an info-dumps. You have to just sit back and go with the flow and abandon the desire to make immediate sense of the world. Fforde builds this world step by step throughout the entire story, and slowly you get a picture of a very closed, hieratical society where stasis and stability are the goal with human characters who are not quite like us. The second mystery is what lies behind the curtains of this society. It is the mystery that our narrator, Eddie Russet, slowly discovers, or rather discovers its existence, because he is a mite too curious. 

The basic premise of the story is that the humans of this society can usually only see one or two primary natural colors, if that. What colors they can see, and how much of that color they can see, determines their place in this very regimented society; a collective ruled by an elaborate set of rules and the highest color seeing members of the collective. There are, however, synthetic colors that everyone can see. Seeing color is one of the great desires of these humans. Showing off one's predominate color using these synthetic colors is a status symbol. The story is a post-apocalyptic on set some 500 years after "Something Happened," though what happened is not known. 

Our narrator, Eddie Russet, (everyone has the last name of related to the primary color they can see) has been assigned to conduct a useless task -a chair census - for a month in a remote town in Wales as punishment for a practical joke he did. Or so he believes. His father accompanies him as a replacement swatchman. Swatchmen are the doctor to these types of humans; curing various ailments by showing a specific synthetic color to the patient. (Think of the pantone series of color samples, if you're familiar with them.) They find that the collective's own swatchman has died under mysterious circumstances, and nothing is quite as it seems. This town is on the fringe of society and the rules are rather loosely interpreted. The story covers only four day as Eddie uncovers a deadly secret with the help of Jane, a "grey" girl i.e. someone who can't see any colors, and are the manual labors of the collective, making enemies in the process.

Enough. 

Here's the opening paragraphs to give you a taste of how the book reads;

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself  - I'd hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

But it wasn't all bad, for the following reason: First I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which was far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second, and more important, I wasn't going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that was why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn't get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I'd held in my hands for a full hour and understood what it meant.

I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.

Passage to Jarpara, Final Thoughts and A Map

 

I've talked a length about Passage to Jarpara in several previous posts, so there isn't all that much more to say about the book. I rather rushed my volunteer beta readers to get this book out on the 21st of March. In part because this book, with all its fits and starts, has been in the works for some 18 months, and I just wanted to be done with it and have it out the door. The other factor is that I ain't as young as I used to be. I don't think I have one foot in the grave just yet. But at 74, I could drop dead tomorrow and no one would raise an eyebrow. Like Captain Hook with the crocodile that swallowed a clock, and had eaten his hand and found it tasty, one hear the faintly ticking of the clock at a this age. So there is no time like the present. For every writer, one of their books is going to be their last one, and if they die in harness, one left unfinished. I'd spent too much time and liked these characters too much to run the slightest risk it being that unfinished one. Hopefully it'll not the last.

As for the story itself. As I've said several times already, I've never been into writing epics. I enjoy reading small scale stories that somehow make everyday life interesting, either with pleasant characters, an interesting time and/or locale, and/or a quiet, but engaging plot. And that's what I enjoy writing as well. In this story I pretty much doubled down on that. The only overarching plot element is the journey to Jarpara and its University in the hope of finding employment. Every other element of the story is incidental. And almost, but not quite all, are everyday events, at least in the islands and on seas of the Tropic Sea. The story then depends on its pleasant characters, and interesting places with a travelogue motif. Hopefully that works for my readers.

This book is different from my other ones in that the romance element is subdued. The chase is over and Taef and Lessie are married. I had hopes of being able to write some witty dialog between them, a sort of Nick and Nora type of relationship, but I don't think I succeeded. In part I may've beyond the limits of my talent. But I will also blame the characters. Writers will sometime talk about their characters taking the story in ways they never envisioned, as if they had an agency of their own. I can see how that happens, though in this case it wasn't so much as taking the story where I wasn't expecting, rather it was the fact that Lessie never had all that much to say in either of the proceeding stories - she is a quiet character, especially in the company of her sister Sella, and I was unable, and/or unwilling to reinvent her for this one. I would've hoped to have made their relationship a little more complex than I was able to. But, as I said, that probably isn't in my wheelhouse as a writer.

I did enjoy the opportunity to bring back a lot of the minor characters from the previous books. I may've stretch coincidences a little to do so, but I used the opportunity to bring them back, even if only for a little walk-on part. It gave me the opportunity to explore Taef's beliefs and attitudes. I also had fun writing several new characters, one in particular that had been lurking off the page in the first two books. I won't say who, but that character was always going to be part of this story. 

A number of my beta readers expressed a desire to have more stories with these characters and setting, suggesting possible story lines. There are certainly plenty of story lines to pick up and run with, but I'm not planning to do so, at least not until I'm 84. As I've said when introducing this book, writing sequels of less than a bestselling series is for chumps. Stand alone books, "singletons", with open endings are the way to go until lightning strikes and you have a bestseller on your hands. Then you can write sequels until the cows come home or readers don't. Of course, if you look at my back catalog, I don't follow my own advice. However, I intend to going forward. No more sequels - except maybe, someday, a novella sequel to The Lost Star's Sea just to get Litang and Cin back together again at the ending. But, mind you, I'm not promising that, it is just something I'd like to do, just as I wanted to give Taef a job.

Well, I guess I've rambled on long enough to fill this post without saying much about Passage to Jarpara. But I hate spoilers, and hate spoiling my books more, so this is the last post for now on that book. 

Below is the official map for Passage to Jarpara. I don't include it in the ebook, as using maps in ebooks is a pain. 

The Saturday Morning Post (40)

 

"What's this?" you say. "Another mystery story? I thought you weren't a fan of mysteries, and here you are, two in a row."

Well, as I mentioned in my last Saturday Morning Post that I'm out of books to read. I've read all the recommended books I had on my list, so I'm on my own for reading material. My wife had just read this library book on her Kindle, and thought I might like it, as it had a first person narration, and none of the things I dislike, like contemporary settings, flashbacks, and multiple points of view. So I decided to give it a try before she returned it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Duty to the Dead  by Charles Todd  C+

This is not a bad book. It reads well, has an engaging narrator, and is set in a historical period that sounded right to me. Unlike that Victorian era historical mystery I read some time back, the authors (a son and mother team) did not try to impress the reader with their research with mini-lectures drawn from Wikipedia. By chance it is the first book of a (currently) 13 book series whose stories take place during and immediately after World War l.

The story involves a British World War l nurse, Bess Crawford. She survives the sinking of the hospital ship Britannica in the Mediterranean Sea in 1916, though her arm was broken. She finds herself on medical leave in England until her arm has healed enough for her to do her job once again. She had been given a message by a dying soldier to deliver to his brother in person. Just two sentences, that told her nothing. Using her leave, she decides that the owes it to the dead soldier, who she had warm feeling for, to deliver this message. After contacting them, she is invited to the family home, and delivers her message, which opens up an ugly can of family worms. An ugly mystery, and her promise to the dying soldier, compels her to uncover the events that took place 15 years before the story opens and their repercussions, in order to uncover the truth. 

My major criticism of the story is that I found it hard to suspend my disbelief in some key aspects of the mystery. While the authors made a valiant effort to make the reader believe that these people could do what they did, and that the authorities could do what they did, I must admit that I never quite bought it. The backstory and some of the actions of the characters just seemed too contrived. Still, I read the entire book, and that says a lot when it comes to me. I don't waste my time reading books I don't like. I think fans of mysteries, especially ones set in historical settings would find this book just fine, and probably enjoy the series as well.

A New Novel and New Audiobooks

The 2024 C. Litka Novel - Passage to Jarpara

I am happy to announce that my 2024 novel, Passage to Jarpara was released on Thursday, 21 March 2024.

The story:

Taef Lang must set out on his grand quest…

… To find a job. 

Now a married man, the time has come for Taef to begin his long-delayed career as a professor of Island archaeology and/or Island history. To do so, he and Lessie, along with Sella and Carz, set sail for the Island and the University of Jarpara.

Passage to Jarpara is a travelogue of that journey. It’s an account of islands called on, old friends and acquaintances met, new ones made, as well as potential pirates, curse-beasts, haunted Tiki palaces, fire islands, and a hidden race of immortals. In short, it’s an episodic record of the everyday life of the island-studded Tropic Sea.

Passage to Jarpara is the third and final volume of Tales of the Tropic Sea from the pen of C. Litka. It draws a fitting conclusion to the adventures of Taef, Sella, and Lessie that begin with their voyage to Redoubt Island and continued with the freeing of the Prisoner of Cimlye. It blends fantasy, science fiction, adventure, and romance told in C. Litka's classic lighthearted style. Like all his novels, it features engaging characters, witty dialog, meticulous world-building, and mysteries to be solved in unexpected ways.

The ebook version is now available for FREE from these ebook retailers. 

Smashwords 

Apple

Barnes & Noble

Kobo 

Google

And several European ebook retailers, including; Thalia , Vivlio .Borrowbox, Odilo.

(It is priced at $.99 at Gardners.)

The FREE audiobook version is available from Google.

The ebook version version is available from Amazon for $3.99

The audiobook version is available from Audible for $3.99 You can add the ebook for $1.99 more

The trade paperback is available from Amazon for $11.99

NEW! C. Litka Audiobooks are now on Audible!

And my second announcement is that most of my books are now available as audiobooks on Amazon and Audible for $3.99.(The minimum price Amazon allows) These auto-narrated audiobooks from Amazon are part of a new beta program that I was offered and was more than happy to take part in. I have to say that I was very happy with the AI narration quality from Amazon. The only hitch in the program so far is that for some unknown reason, I've not been able to get The Bright Black Sea, The Lost Star's Sea, and Shadows of an Iron Kingdom working as audiobooks. Hopefully I'll get that worked out with Amazon shortly. 

I also have six audiobooks available for FREE on Apple Books, the rest are hanging fire, and have been for the better part of three months. What Google and Amazon can do in hours, Apple appears unable to do in months. Hopefully at some time in the not too distant future Apple will get around to converting the rest of my books, though a this point I'm not holding my breath. 

Writing Passage to Jarpara

 

click for a larger map

As I told my beta readers, this is a totally unnecessary story. I had left Taef and Lessie sailing for their bright future together, a more definite ending then I usually provide. So why then, does it even exist? There are several reasons.

The first is that I sort of always wanted to see Taef get the job he wanted, and I thought that there might be a story in a long trip across the Tropic Sea. A second reason is that I really like these people and the Tropic Sea, so I didn't need much of an excuse to revisit Taef, Lessie, Sella and Carz, and the Islands. Thus, there was always a motivation for one more story.

Next was opportunity. In 2022 I had written and submitted The Girl on the Kerb to a publisher during their un-agented open period, and had to wait at least 9 months to learn that they passed on it. And during that time I had, just for the experience, been querying agents while I waited on the publisher. So with that book hanging fire, it was time to start another one, even if The Girl on the Kerb looked to be my 2023 novel.

And then there was the fact that story ideas are very scarce on the ground for me these days, and quite frankly, that sort-of-story idea I had, was the only one I had. So when fall 2022 came around, and with it, the writing season, I decided to run with the one story idea I had. And that story idea was summed up in the (not serious) working title Zar Lada, Taef Lang, and the Island of the Slumbering God. I didn't care if it turned out to be a novel or a novella, I'd play that by ear.

The basic idea was that I'd have Taef, Lessie, along with Sella and her new husband, Carz sail east to Jarpara and during the voyage get talked into making a side trip to view the slumbering god, or some such mysterious thing, by a person they met aboard the ship. I wanted to see how I could write a married couple, once the romantic chase was over. I had hoped to be able to write some sort of Nick & Nora type of small talk between them. I also felt that I could use the story to bring back a some minor characters for their final bow as well. It was never going to be an epic quest. I've always been into small personal, character-focused stories, and this was going to be a very small scale, low stakes, character-focused story.

I started writing it on 14 Sept. 2022 and by 6 Nov., I had about 25K words written. I stopped work on it at that point because I had no idea what a slumbering god, or any Island mystery, could be. This has been a curse of mine recently, starting a story, with a vague middle part, and once into it, unable to come up with that middle part. 

On the 2 Jan. 2023 I once more started on the project, starting with a new beginning scene - the return to Lil Lon to introduce Lessie to Taef's parents, which was not in the plans at the end of The Prisoner of Cimlye, but seemed like a good idea. I had 38K words written before the project petered out again a few weeks later. During the following months, I returned to it in spurts - mostly editing what I had - so that by 6 June 2023 I had 44K words done. At this point the story clearly wasn't going to be a novella, and so I needed  to come ups at least 30K more words to make it a respectable novel. 30K words for which I didn't have the faintest idea where to find that slumbering god, or any other attraction could be.

I then spent the summer daydreaming up other potential stories, one a portal fantasy novella inspired by a girl I saw at a London bus stop during one of the virtual bus rides I was taking on YouTube. And a second, very mundane fantasy story, somewhat inspired by the stories I've been reading by D E Stevenson and Molly Clavering, which is to say stories that don't involve more than domestic trials and perhaps a bit of romance. I like to color outside the lines, and given how popular the epic & grimdark fantasies are, with their dragons and epic battles, I wanted to write something completely different. I spent all summer working a story out to the point were I probably could've written it, but...

But I had half a novel sitting unfinished, and I feared that I might find myself burned out on this summer story idea half way through writing it, so I decided to buckle down and finish Passage to Jarpara. To trust that I could find the slumbering god when I needed it and just start writing. So on 1 October, I once more started in on Passage to Jarpara, inserting another new chapter in what I'd already written, editing what I had written, and then writing forward. I came up with two ideas for side-trips, one minor, the other major.

The major idea I came up with for the slumbering god motif came to me while I lay awake one night. It was actually a return to an early idea I had for what Sella, Lessie and Taef would find on Redoubt Island in the first book of the series. I modified it somewhat, but the core idea for what they would've discovered in my first version of Redoubt Island will be found on Recluse Island in Passage to Jarpara. I thought it a fitting way to draw the series to a close. 

So it all worked out and  I finished the first draft of the story a few days before my self-imposed deadline of 1 Feb 2024, with a 105K novel. Now people often say that you should put the story aside for a few months before coming back to it for a second draft, but at my age, I can't take that chance. I spent February doing my second and third drafts and running it through Google Drive and Grammarly, before turning it over to my wife Sally in early March for her proofreading.

And being an old and impatient man, I decided to publish it on the first day of spring, 21 March 2024, no doubt putting my beta readers on the spot.

I will write more about the story itself after its release. Stay tuned!

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No.39)

 

With the last two massive books dealt with, one way or another, I found that my TBR list was blank. I had nothing to read. So I went to the bookshelf and pulled out volume three of the Brother Cadfael series, and read the next story in that series.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters  B+

In this story we meet a young, traveling juggler and musician who is fleeing an angry mob of towns people who are accusing him of murder and robbery. He makes it to the Monastery and into the church, which, by law, gives him sanctuary for 40 days, or as long as he stays in the church. The person he is accused of murdering, does not, in fact, die, so only the theft charge hangs over him. Still, might be enough to hang him in this time period. Bother Cadfael is called on to dresses the wounds the juggler received from the mob, and in questioning him, believes his claim to be innocent of both crimes. But that impression must be proven and Cadfael, along with his friend, the under sheriff, set out to find the true facts in the affair.

The crime took place on the night of a wedding celebration in the house of a wealthy, and miserly goldsmith, and in the course of the story we get to know the inhabitants of that house. As customary with Ellis Peter's Cadfael stories, the person in trouble is a young man, and there is an element of (an unconvincing) romance involving him as well. 

Like always, this is an interesting tale, with a lot of time spent finely drawing the characters involved in the mystery, with some detective work mixed in here and there. Like the previous story, The Virgin in the Ice, it has a very dramatic closing scene which, I must confess, I'm not overly fond of. In some ways I think these dramatic climatic scenes are not only unnecessary, but seem out of place with the general tone of these stories, with their focus on the everyday life of the 12th century monastery, the city, and surrounding countryside, then on the extraordinary event - the mystery to be solved. And I think that's best solved in the classic murderer mystery style of some sort of review of the evidence, and the unmasking of the criminal. But as always, that's just me, though in this case I was also unconvinced that the who in the whodunit had sufficient motive to do it. Even so, it was an enjoyable read, though not quite top tier installment of this excellent series. I think that you can't go wrong with a Cadfael mystery.

Proofreading

Any long time reader of mine is well aware that the first editions of my early books had too many typos. While I was well aware that I couldn't spell English to save my soul, I didn't realize how blind I was to my typing mistakes. I read what I expect to read, whether the word(s) is(are) actually on the page or not. As a result, I often miss in both typing and reading the little words that aren't there but should be. As well as the double words that arise either out of stopping to think of the next phrase, or from moving lines about in editing, and the use of the wrong words that look similar to the right ones. 

Proofreading is a very specialized skill, and though my wife, unlike me, knows the rules of grammar, spelling, and was a high school teacher for decades, she only finds 95+% of my mistakes, so that some of my mistakes inevitably through. Thankfully, over the years, some very kind readers have taken the time to point out the errors they come across to me that I then correct. Some of these kind people have since become my beta readers, and with their generous help I've been able to slowly improve all my books over the years.

I'd like to believe that having been at this writing thing most of my life, I've gotten better at it. And while I think I have, I'm still far from perfect. I have, however, started using several programs in addition to LibreOffice to process my work. Three years ago I discovered that Google Docs has a much more robust grammar checker than LibreOffice, so I ran all my published books through it, and now upload all of my new books to proofread my stories before handing the story off to my wife. It finds many of the double words and some of the wrong and missing words. But not all. My wife still had to do her proofreading, and my beta readers still find some typos that had escaped both Google Docs and my wife.

For Passage to Jarpara, I decided to add a second layer of automated grammar checking, and ran the story through the free version of Grammarly, after running it through Google Docs. It found a number of double words and wrong words that Google Docs had missed. I had hoped that between the two programs, I'd be able to hand my wife a clean copy that all she'd need to do was read it. Alas, this was not the case.

Spelling wise, few words escaped detection. There were several missing little words, mostly "to" that were missed by both programs. Grammarly liked hyphenated words, i.e. "white-painted house" and having no opinion one way or the other, I went along with Grammarly on that. However, something like 75% of Grammarly's suggestions involved the elimination or insertion of commas. I may not know the "rules" about comma placement, but place them where I think a speaker would pause, which, given that my books are now auto-generated audiobooks, is pretty important. Still, I made the lazy decision just to go with Grammarly on commas. My wife, however, quickly complained about the lack of commas where commas ought to be. I also found them missing where I would've, and maybe did, place them, so I spent a lot of time adding commas back in. Another point was that for some crazy reason, I decided to use semi-colons instead of my usual dashes. Grammarly didn't complain about them at all, but my wife has very strong  and narrow opinions on the use of semi-colons/colons, and so I had to go back to dashes to please her. I'll never use a semi-colon again.

Both these programs tend to ignore words that make no sense, so that they usually don't try to correct my made-up words. This simplifies things greatly. However, LibreOffice will underline them. And unfortunately I will misspell my own made-up words, and since they are all underlined, I never realize that I have. I could tell the program to ignore those words as I write them, but it seems to lose those instructions as soon as I close the program, so they're all underlined again the following morning. This time around, I spent several hours working on the final proofread draft, telling the program to ignore the correctly spelled made-up words, so that I could find my misspelled ones. I found maybe 20 of them. So frustrating.

I haven't given up hope of finding a completely reliable, and free, grammar checker, or perhaps use three or four of them in succession to see if I can eliminate all the errors that one or two programs seem to miss. But that will be for the next novel. This time around, I'm hoping that my beta readers don't find too many errors, none being too much to hope for. In any event, Passage to Jarpara should be a close to perfect as a C. Litka book in this world will ever be.